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And of course, if the tinfoil hat mentality is appealing, why not one actor spamming comments for _both_ sides? If said actor prefers one position they can just
by Arubis 7y ago
And of course, if the tinfoil hat mentality is appealing, why not one actor spamming comments for _both_ sides? If said actor prefers one position they can just have a an order-of-magnitude difference in what they submitted; either way, said hypothetical party can be satisfied with eroding public trust in the process.
- ikeboy 7y agoPerhaps - my own pet theory is it was just some bored guys on 4chan who did it because they could. The thing is, a lot of the bots didn't submit comments directly, which would have required getting keys to submit in bulk and leave a trail. Instead, they filled out forms on the many sites that were set up to take names and submit form letters to the FCC. So some advocacy org might set up a site and get a million comments, half of them might be legit and half might be from a script kiddy running a database of addresses and names through the site, which then submits it to the FCC. The site has no particular incentive to vet the submissions. Knowing the IP address of the entity who sent the message to the FCC is close to useless, in that scenario.
- simion314 7y agoI would consider the scenario where it was not just 1 person/group, you could have more then 1 person trying to cheat the system in favor of his favorite tribe or even just trolls practicing their scripting skills.